THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILLS now making their way through Congress offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity to crush barriers to women, including women of color, that keep them from achieving good careers and better lives, as they do the work of rebuilding America.

I recently watched a single mom graduate from our carpentry pre-apprenticeship. She’s an athletic person who had loved the constant motion of working as a nursing assistant in a hospital, but the pay wasn’t great. When an opportunity came to be trained as a correctional officer for higher wages, she jumped, but then chafed at all the sitting around and three long years of working nights. She approached me after the graduation with her two young children and said, “I just have to thank you. You have no idea how this will change our lives. When I got the letter saying I was accepted, my son asked, ‘Does this mean you’ll be home at night?’ ‘Yes, honey, that’s what it means.’”

Starting wages as a union carpenter apprentice are higher than she’d made in either job. She’s getting an apprenticeship training worth $48,000 for free. There’s high quality health insurance and a pension. And she’ll be home for her kids.

When I started as a carpenter apprentice in 1989, women made up somewhere between 2 percent and 3 percent of the national construction workforce. Fifteen years ago, we were at about 3 percent; 2020: 4 percent. Not much progress. In 2009, the Boston Carpenters Union co-convened the Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues to focus on raising the numbers. The first game-changer we identified was that the previous 30 years of recruiting and training women had failed, in part, because it was a supply-only strategy; we had to make sure there was demand – that contractors were hiring women. We developed best practices for contractors and end-users to meet workforce goals on public and private construction projects. The numbers started increasing. You’ll find our how-to manual, Finishing the Job, at policygroupontradeswomen.org.